Student Research Awards

Drs. Jeffrey P. Kaleta and Jingjing Yin along with Ms. Sushmita Khan won the Best Faculty / Student Paper Award at the 21st Annual Meeting of the Southern Association of Information Systems (SAIS) in Atlanta, GA. Their paper, Twitter Sentiment Toward Autism During Autism Awareness Month, was presented by Dr. Kaleta and Ms. Khan at the 2018 annual SAIS conference held on March 23-24th.

This study was a collaborative project investigating the topics and public opinions during autism awareness month as expressed on Twitter, a social media platform. The outcome of this work is the first of several initiatives investigating public views of health-related concerns over social media, making use of a variety of text analysis techniques.

Dr. Kaleta is an assistant professor in the Department of Information Technology within the Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Computing, Dr. Yin is an assistant professor in the department of Biostatistics located within the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health, and Ms. Khan is completing her Master’s of Applied Engineering in IT this Spring 2018.

IT Students Win SE Decision Sciences Institute 2018 Best Paper Award

Ryan Wilcauskas, Meghan Wright and Kaitlin Reid won the Best Undergraduate Student Paper Award at the 48th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Decision Sciences Institute in Wilmington, NC. The title of their paper was The Impact of Workplace Practices on Patients Seeking Mental Health Treatment: A Decision Tree Approach.

Part of the paper came from the work they did in a data mining course taught by Dr. Cheryl Aasheim that they took as part of their degree program, Bachelor of Science in Information Technology, in Fall 2017. They continued their work under the mentorship of Dr. Aasheim, running additional models and refining the paper after class ended through the winter break.

Ryan and Meghan attended the conference on February 21-23, 2018. Kaitlin graduated this past Fall and, therefore, could not attend. The students received certificates and a monetary award.

IT Graduate and Undergraduate Students Win Best Paper Award at SE DSI 2017

Kennitha Cochrum and Tiffany Carpenter were presenters at the 2017 SE SDI Conference.

The paper titled “Predicting IMDB Score: An Application of Decision Trees” by Geanna Torres, Kennitha Cochrum, Jonathan Covington and Tiffany Carpenter took first place in the undergraduate student paper award competition at the 2017 meeting of Southeast Decision Sciences Institute (SE DSI). The 47th annual conference was held in Charleston, SC on February 22 – 24, 2017. Kennitha Cochrum and Tiffany Carpenter were the presenters at the conference. Geanna, Kennitha, Jonathan and Tiffany are all seniors in the BS in Information Technology program at Georgia Southern University.

Sushmita Khan took first place in the graduate student paper award competition.

The paper titled “Grouping Students According to IT-Related Ethical Behavior: An Application of the Clustering Algorithm” by Sushmita Khan took first place in the graduate student paper award competition. Sushmita is in her second semester in the MS in Applied Engineering in the IT track.

SE DSI is a regional subdivision of the Decision Sciences Institute, a professional organization of academicians and practitioners interested in the application of quantitative and behavioral methods to the problems of society.

All students started the project in their data mining course in the IT program last semester and were mentored by their faculty advisor, Dr. Cheryl Aasheim, Professor of Information Technology.

IT Students Win Undergraduate Student Best Paper Award for Southeast Decision Sciences Conference

Congratulations to Information Technology students Jordan Bacon, Chris Bergin, Michael Canter and Matthew DeAngelis for winning the Best Paper Award in the Undergraduate Student Research track at the Southeast Decision Sciences Institute conference held in Savannah on February 25 – 27th, 2015.

Under the direction of Dr. Cheryl Aasheim, these students authored a paper titled Analysis of Georgia Southern University Student College Football Attendance that utilized data mining techniques to analyze factors that affect football attendance at Georgia Southern University. The students presented their paper at the conference on February 26, 2015.

The research was an extension of a semester long project the students completed in their data mining course that is part of the Information Management specialization within the BS in Information Technology program.